Episode summary
Wealth Management Invest: Building Diversified Portfolios with Nomura’s Milissa Hutchinson
Summary
Milissa Hutchinson says Nomura Asset Management is building its U.S. wealth business around diversification, broader product access, and more direct support for advisors. She describes Nomura as a global asset manager with equities, fixed income, and private credit capabilities, and says the firm is emphasizing ETFs, private credit vehicles for individual investors, and a growing distribution team across wirehouses, broker-dealers, and ETF specialists.
Her main portfolio message is that 2026’s market environment favors resilience over concentration. She argues that investors should keep exposure to innovation, emerging markets, and small caps, while also maintaining quality growth and value allocations. On the fixed income side, she says current yields create a real income opportunity in high yield and municipal bonds, and that active management matters more as benchmarks become less reliable guides in a rapidly changing market.
On AI and innovation, Milissa Hutchinson says Nomura sees opportunity beyond the largest U.S. technology names, including in emerging markets such as Korea and Taiwan, where high-bandwidth memory and other supply-chain niches may benefit from the AI cycle. On private credit, she says recent headline risk has been overstated, and that the asset class should be evaluated as a diversified income source, not a liquidity substitute for public markets.
Key takeaways
- Milissa Hutchinson says Nomura is prioritizing ETFs, private credit vehicles, and advisor-facing resources as it expands its U.S. wealth business.
- Hutchinson argues that diversification is more important now because market concentration has made broad exposure and resilience matter again.
- She says Nomura sees AI-related opportunity in emerging markets, especially Korea and Taiwan, rather than only in large U.S. hyperscalers.
- Hutchinson says current yields in high yield and municipal bonds give investors a chance to lock in income, with tax-adjusted muni yields especially compelling.
- She says private credit headline risk has been overstated and that the asset class should be used as part of a diversified portfolio, not for daily liquidity.
Notable quotes
“we believe that we now have the opportunity to grow as a you very large 900 billion dollar plus asset management organization”
“the main themes that we're talking about and this goes what we're hearing from clients in the market as well is on the equity side ensuring that you are staying diversified”
“our emerging market strategy and ETF in particular which is EMEQ has been invested really in order to be able to take advantage of the broader AI trend”
“I think all I think this is the perfect environment to that starts to play out”
“It's really when you include things like real estate lending and assetbacked it it's closer to to a 17 trillion dollar market”
How the episode opens
Hello and welcome back to the Wealth Management Invest podcast. I'm your host David Bodimer, editorial director with Wealth Management. I'm very pleased to bring on for this episode Melissa Hutchinson who is the head of US wealth at Namora Asset Management. Melissa, welcome to the podcast.
Thanks so much, David. We always really appreciate your content. So very happy to join today. So before we kind of dive into some trends within the market, I just wanted to give you an opportunity to tell folks a bit more if they're not familiar with no more asset management and where you've and as the head of US wealth is within the organization.
Yeah, sure. Thank you so much for that opportunity. I'm sure many people have heard of Namora as a broad financial institution based in Tokyo.
as an asset management organization. We brought over a large business from McQuary about eight months ago and have formed a global asset management organization as Namora asset management uh here with under the broader Namora umbrella and it's something we're really excited about. Namora is actually a 100year-old institution both in Tokyo but also actually here in New York as well.
And we believe that we now have the opportunity to grow as a you very large 900 billion dollar plus asset management organization and actually a top 10 ETF manager globally as well. So we're looking forward to telling pe more people about our story.
And so in terms of thinking about about scaling a wealth platform in the US like you said it's not entirely new but it we are looking to to to kind of grow it more at this point. What does that look like? And is are there specific areas within the the types of funds or or types of assets that you're primarily focus focusing on at this point?
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- portfolio diversification
- emerging markets ai exposure
- small caps and equity factor roles
- fixed income income opportunities
- private credit liquidity considerations
Companies and tickers mentioned
- Nomura Asset Management
- Nomura
Watch the episode
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
More from WealthManagement.com
-
The WealthStack Podcast: AI, Video and the New Rules of Client Engagement with David Moricca -
401(k) Real Talk Episode 216: November 11, 2026 -
The Planning Opportunities Hidden in High-Net-Worth Conversations -
Wealth Management Invest: Expanding Access to Private Markets with Blackstone’s Farhad Karim -
401(k) Real Talk Episode 215: November 4, 2026 -
How Advisors Can Use AI Without Losing the Human Relationship with Rron Rexha
WealthManagement.com, this episode and its artwork belong to their owners. Octagon is not affiliated with the show; this page is an independent summary.
